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Lobbying in the Trump era: Californians say little has changed but the language

Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA)

Aug. 03--President Donald Trump came to Washington, D.C. decrying lobbyists and vowing to "drain the swamp" -- but six months into his administration, California's top lobbyists say the only major changes they've had to make are in their language.

For the most part, California government agencies lobbying in D.C. are largely focused on the same issues as always: getting a cut of the federal budget and advocating for increased federal spending, according to federal lobbying disclosures due late last month.

Lobbying in 2017 means translating these pitches into Trump-ese -- talking about how clients' pet projects will create American jobs, help the country compete around the world, and save federal funds.

"We're trying to fit our clients' agendas to match the flavor of the day," said one lobbyist, who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly about the business. When pitching green energy projects to Trump officials, for example, "we still talk about sustainability, but we talk about it not from a climate change perspective but from a cost-reduction basis."

"It may not be called green infrastructure, it may be called something else," added Roger Gwinn, whose firm represents several California counties and water districts.

So far, there's been no sign of a backlash from the federal government in response to California's political leaders painting themselves as the "resistance" to Trump.

"It's pretty much the same," said Martin Kanner, a veteran lobbyist who represents the Northern California Power Authority, among other groups.

It seems like almost every government agency in California, from cities and counties to irrigation districts and harbor authorities, has their man or woman in D.C. Lobbyists running around the Capitol represent everything from the California Earthquake Authority to The Transbay Joint Powers Authority to the California Dried Plum Board.

During and after his presidential campaign, Trump cast the influence of lobbyists as one of the ills of Washington he was planning to eliminate. "The whole place is one big lobbyist," he told 60 Minutes in November. "We're doing a lot of things to clean up the system."

So far, however, Trump's "drain the swamp" rhetoric has amounted to more bark than bite, observers say. In January, he implemented an ethics pledge barring officials in the administration from working on issues that they lobbied on in the past two years and preventing them from lobbying agencies they worked for five years after they leave the federal government. It also prevents administration officials from ever becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.

But unlike a similar policy in the Obama administration, the Trump pledge allows former officials to lobby parts of the government they didn't work in. The Trump administration has also doled out waivers to the policy, but has resisted publicly releasing the waivers.

"His revolving-door restrictions are more loosey-goosey than what Obama had," said Richard Painter, the vice-chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a good government group.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Many California governments are looking forward to increased infrastructure spending that Trump has called one of his priorities. While it's been overshadowed by issues like health care and tax reform, lobbyists say planning for an infrastructure package is quietly progressing in Congress and in the administration.

"People will be arguing over how to pay for these things, but there's a lot of agreement on what needs to be done," Gwinn said. A priority for many local governments, he said, are efforts to speed up federal environmental impact assessments, which can stretch on for years, holding up infrastructure projects.

Others are also trying to get a word in the capitol's more contentious political debates, with the University of California, Alameda County and others opposing Republican-led efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature health care reform.

The apparent death of the repeal effort in the Senate last week was a boon to California hospitals and governments, said Dennis Cardoza, a former California Congressman who represented the Central Valley for a decade before resigning in 2012 and becoming a lobbyist.

"There's a temporary sigh of relief," said Cardoza, whose clients include the California Hospital Association, "but no one expects the Trump administration and the Republicans in Congress to suddenly embrace Obamacare, and they're still going to attempt in the future to advocate for changes to the program."

Cardoza, a Democrat, said he hadn't seen any specific animosity toward funding for California from the administration, even as many of the state's politicians compete to be the most anti-Trump.

Some of the biggest difficulties lobbyists say they're facing is just dealing with empty offices. Trump has yet to fill the vast majority of the 3,000-some political appointee positions across the administration.

One California lobbyist recently tried to lobby the Interior Department on a water policy issue, only to find that the officials working on it hadn't been appointed yet. He ended up getting a personal sit-down with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke -- something that would have been highly unusual during the Obama administration.

"It's a little bizarre for the secretary to do the meetings that should be the deputy secretaries or assistant secretaries," the lobbyist, who also asked not to be named, said. "But the only person there was the secretary."

Overall, Painter said, the "swamp" is alive and well -- although California lobbyists insist they aren't that bad.

"People think of us as slick people with suede shoes, getting our cronies to do our bidding," Cardoza said. "The reality of what we do is very different: It's more imparting information to members of Congress that they wouldn't otherwise have ready access to... Not everything we do is sinister."